1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to wireless communication carriers. More particularly, it relates to operational support system (OSS), application/systems management, and network management.
2. Background of Related Art
Many network management technologies exist that allow operators to manage applications and devices at runtime. For instance, SNMP, TL1 and JMX each attempt to provide operators with the ability to manipulate and affect change at runtime. The fundamental of each is similar. It is to manipulate the objects of an application through messaging.
SNMP is the standard basic management service for networks that operate in TCP/IP environments. It is intended primarily to operate well-defined devices easily and does so quite successfully. However, it is limited to the querying and updating of variables. Transaction Language 1 (TL1) is a set of ASCII-based instructions, or “messages,” that an operations support system (OSS) uses to manage a network element (NE) and its resources. JMX is a Java centric technology that permits the total management of objects: not only the manipulation of fields, but also the execution of object operations. It is designed to take advantage of the Java language to allow for the discovery and manipulation of new or legacy applications or devices.
Operational Support for enterprise applications is currently realized using a variety of technologies and distinct, separate services. For instance, network management protocols (SNMP, JMX, TL1, etc.) provide runtime configuration and some provide operation invocation, but these technologies are not necessarily geared toward applications. Some are language specific (e.g., JMX) and require language agnostic bridging mechanisms that must be implemented, configured and maintained. SNMP is generic (e.g., TL1 and SNMP) and very simple in nature, but it requires application developers to implement solutions to common OSS tasks on top of SNMP. TL1 is also ASCII based and generic. However, while it is very flexible and powerful, it is another language that must be mastered, and it's nature is command line based. As a result, it is not intuitively based in presentation layer tools. While all the technologies have their respective benefits, they do not provide direct means of providing higher level OSS functionality. Conventionally, applications are monitored, analyzed and managed at runtime.